On Friday afternoon a huge blaze engulfed the Parika Market, consuming not just the stalls within the complex but also those on the roadside as well, destroying many dozens of income sources in the process. It was driven by the NE trade winds, and although the fire service was called out, the closest stations in a position to respond were at Leonora roughly eleven miles distant, and La Grange, while the others which sent help later were sited much further away, namely at Eccles, Campbellville, Central Station and West Ruimveldt. Inevitably, therefore, there was a time-lag between the fire igniting and the first tender arriving. In a release the Guyana Fire Service said it had been alerted to the fire around 3.14 pm, following which it dispatched five water tenders, one water bowser and two support vehicles, with the first water tender arriving on the scene at 15:36. One vendor told Stabroek News that the fire service took one hour to arrive while another gave an even longer estimate, but it is conceivable, although not certain, that this is an exaggeration in relation to the first tender, since vendors watching their livelihoods being reduced to ashes with no fire engine in immediate sight, probably felt the response time was longer than in reality it was.
Whatever the case, the first water tender could not have accomplished very much given the stage the fire had reached, but then neither could the others when they arrived, and the GFS soon had to resort to the Essequibo River as an open water source. Minister Robeson Benn later said that the tanks between them had 450 to 600 gallons of water, but that this was insufficient. In a fire of this kind and in this location one might have thought that a fireboat would have been what was called for. Although one was acquired in October 2018 (and presuming it is still operational), it is based in the Demerara River with a view to covering Port Georgetown primarily. As a consequence, given the distance involved it could hardly have provided any great assistance to Parika.
In addition to the afternoon breeze from the ocean driving the inferno it is not difficult to understand why it got so quickly out of control given the inflammable nature of much of the contents of the market. There was one stall in particular which represented a critical problem in that it sold fireworks, a notoriously combustible item. This newspaper understands that the conflagration was triggered by sparks emanating from welding which was underway on the roof of the market. It is thought that a spark or sparks from these activities came into contact with the stall selling squibs, flares and various explosives, and the inevitable happened.
That the source was a spark igniting fireworks appears to be confirmed by vendors on the scene, one of whom told this newspaper that she heard what sounded like six explosions. Another, Ms Meena Rampersaud and her daughter said they heard what sounded like “squib noises” and then saw fire coming from a stall located right below where the men were working on the roof. Ms Marcia Joseph who had five connected stalls recounted how the fire began “on a high stall” underneath where the roof works were in progress, and that a spark caught on to the fireworks. Two others as well described to this newspaper how they heard fireworks going off, and how the fire started from there. The fire service confined themselves to saying that their preliminary investigations had revealed that welding from construction work on the roof produced sparks which came into contact with nearby combustible materials and that the market complex had been severely damaged by the time fire-fighters tried to extinguish the blaze.
Minister Benn urged the public to remain cautious regarding the cause of the fire, saying the purported origin was not the confirmed conclusion of the fire service. “We understand but we’ll have to clarify later, confirm later, that there was welding going on in the building and that the sparks fell down onto flammable substances; that is what we understand so far as to why this has happened,” he was quoted as saying. It shouldn’t require any grand investigation to establish that the roof was under construction and that welding was going on there; even the GFS had no doubts about that, just as it
seems to have already come to the conclusion that a spark ignited combustible materials. The only thing at issue in terms of causation is whether fireworks were involved, and if the Minister bothered to speak to the vendors he would soon discover that they most likely were. Whether the fire service did everything possible once it arrived on the scene is another matter the Minister might like to inquire into, since at least one vendor, Mr Samlall, told this newspaper that the fire started in the middle of the market, and that more could have been done to save the outer part.
Whatever the role of fireworks in the fire, the question has to be asked as to what they were doing being sold in a stall in Parika Market. The police never tire of issuing press releases about the dangers of fireworks and the fact that it is illegal to sell them, so here they were, presumably being illegally imported and sold quite openly. That was not the only area where the police fell down on their duty; one vendor, Mr Rohan Lall described to this newspaper how disappointed he was by passers-by who seized the opportunity in the chaos to steal many of the vendors’ products. Other vendors too confirmed the looting, one of them describing how at the back of the building many residents including women and children could be seen grabbing whatever they could get from the stalls.
In what now seem like times immemorial, whenever there was a large fire the police would be immediately on the scene keeping the crowd at bay so they did not interfere with the work of the fire service, as well as to ensure there was no looting. In this selfish era when many of us seem to have lost our sympathy and respect for other human beings, the police should have moved immediately to take control of the situation so the vendors did not have the depredations of theft to add to their enormous fire losses. So what were the police doing while the fire was going on, more especially since the police station is so close by? The Minister should not exert himself on causation issues, instead he should demand answers from the GPF.
There is something else too: Why were vendors in the market at all if it was under construction? Common sense which admittedly is in short supply these days would seem to dictate that any form of welding represents a hazard if flammable materials, never mind fireworks, are in proximity. It was Chairman of Region Three Inshan Ayube who told the media that the vendors had been given notice to evacuate the complex as recently as Monday, and although they agreed they had failed to comply. It may be, of course, that they didn’t take him too seriously because they had been informed over the Christmas holiday that immediately following the break they would have to move, and that last week they were supposed to move but did not do so. That said, they must have been fully aware they should not be there when they heard the construction work underway on Friday.
It is not clear how long the reconstruction project was to take, and whether if it was to be of any duration the vendors had been offered a temporary site. If they had not it would have been very difficult for some of them to move out particularly if their profit margins were meagre. In addition it might be argued that in a general sense this is a risk-taking society in so far as many citizens believe that a foreseeable danger won’t strike them. Whatever the case, no construction should have begun unless the vendors had evacuated the market, and they should not have been allowed to sell there on Friday. The government certainly had the means at its disposal to make sure this was done, and to see they were given an alternative interim site. All of that now is too late, but one hopes this is a lesson for the authorities in how to handle such situations in other locations.
In times gone by we have had a major conflagration caused by fireworks, but that was in the 19th century when much of Charlestown was burnt down because the Chinese manufactured these kinds of explosives there. Those were the days, however, when there were no safety measures in place, and while times have changed in that regard, some of the current laws are clearly not being enforced. It is not the first time either that repair on a roof caused a serious loss, as for example when a careless workman soldering in the wooden tower of the aesthetic Catholic Cathedral caused it to be burnt down in 1913. His power source in those days was a coal pot, and it was his carelessness in relation to the coals which caused the loss of one of Georgetown’s architectural gems.
Guyana has great experience of major fires going back well over two hundred years, but sometimes one cannot avoid the impression that citizens as well as authorities still do not take the danger they represent seriously enough.
